


Blame

by Kannika



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Moment, Character Study, Drabble, F/M, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:41:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24186070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kannika/pseuds/Kannika
Summary: That carrier. The rest of the world could burn down around Han for all he cares (maybe it is, it wouldn’t be against his luck) and he thinks he wouldn’t be able to move because that carrier in front of him has landed and is unloading, and he knows without the Force or anything else to tell him that Leia is on it.Leia is here.
Relationships: Leia Organa/Han Solo, Rey & Han Solo
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Blame

**Author's Note:**

> Happy late Star Wars Day! I still love The Force Awakens so much. Such a perfect movie.

That carrier. The rest of the world could burn down around Han for all he cares (maybe it is, it wouldn’t be against his luck) and he thinks he wouldn’t be able to move because that carrier in front of him has landed and is unloading, and he knows without the Force or anything else to tell him that Leia is on it. 

Leia is here. 

He wasn’t prepared for this, at all, when Maz told him to go home, but he’s here now and he feels like a kid at the Academy again. All nerves and sweaty palms. God knows what you get with Leia. It’s a coin toss, which side, but he has a sneaking suspicion this time, and he braces.

She steps out of the carrier, keeping stride with the men forty years younger than her, finds him abruptly, and stops short.

Her eyes have seen war. Some people slip and call her Princess still but they aren’t the ones that know her. She could don a lightsaber and follow Luke and it would suit her just as well as this get-up. Jedi are duty-bound. They have morals and codes and rules and destinies.

There’s where he and Leia didn’t fit, he thinks. She married a coward.

Her eyes, looking at him now, are not the ones of a warrior. They are kind. Forgiving. 

That’s the part that kills him, really. He doesn’t deserve for her to look at him like that. He’s the reason… for all of it. All of this. For Ben and all that he’s caused. For Luke running away and all those young Jedi he was training dead and all these rebels dead and…

And now the girl. The girl who feels familiar. Feels like… like something he and Leia could have had, maybe. In another lifetime when he didn’t screw up so massively as a father to the one he had that he was too afraid to try for anything more. 

He stood there and watched his son carry away the girl who looked at him the way Luke had, the way Leia does now: with trust, understanding, like he’s more than he actually is. Ninety-nine percent of the galaxy sees him as a smuggler, with all that that entails. Big ego, shoot-before-you-think, cut-to-the-quick words because niceties leave dead friends instead of alive maybes. Luke and Leia, they made him what he is. They believed he was more and he wanted more than money, and he didn’t but he couldn’t stand for either of them to lose their light because he wouldn’t change. 

This girl, Rey, she wanted to go with him, he could see that. She felt the Falcon inside of her like an old friend; she watched him with the awe of a miracle unfolding in front of her when he said the Jedi were real, and she believed him. She murmured “I didn’t know there was this much green in the entire galaxy” and all he thought was _I can fix this._ She had so much light inside of her, the same way Luke and Leia do. She gazed out the front window of the Falcon like she wanted to soak up all the color inside of her and his heart broke a little and he wanted to take her to see everything else, too. He wanted to help her not to lose that light that Jakku had tried so hard to kill. 

He could have loved her. The same way he loves Leia and Ben and Luke and Chewie. And he couldn’t bring himself to open his mouth when Ben carried her away because he was afraid. Because he’s afraid there’s nothing left under the mask and Ben is gone. 

And now she’s gone, too.

And Leia looks at him with gentle understanding, not like he’s forgiven but like there’s nothing to forgive at all. She’s aged some, since last time he saw her, but with grace, and she stands unbowed and ready for whatever comes, for fate, for whatever the universe can throw at her next. She stands and waits for him, because she’s patient where he’s impulsive and brave where he runs. If fighting a losing war and doing it without her brother or her son or her husband or her world hasn’t broken her, nothing will. She is still light and kindness and goodness under a skin that’s pure steel.

It’s why he loves her and why he can’t have her and why he wants to stay and why he knows he can’t.


End file.
